ABSTRACT

This experiment was conducted to determine the effect of different processing techniques of soya bean diets with cassava flour on production indices of Japanese quail. Four iso-caloric diets were used throughout the experimental periods. A total of 160 birds were randomly distributed into 4 experimental treatments, with forty birds per treatment, in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD). Birds in each treatment were further divided into 4 replicates of 10 birds each. The treatments were T1 (Commercial feed, which served as the control), T2 (Boiled dry soya bean with cassava flour), T3 (Fermented dry soya bean with cassava flour) and T4 (Dry roasted soya bean with cassava flour). The birds were fed 25g of diet/bird daily across all experimental treatments. Data collected on the productive and egg parameters included; weekly body weight, daily egg number and weight, daily feed intake, egg length, egg diameter, yolk height, yolk diameter, albumen height, yolk weight, yolk color, shell weight, shell thickness, and albumen weight. Data collected were recorded per replicate, and subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA), while significantly different treatment means were separated using the Tukey’s honest significance at 5% probability test (SAS 2013). After the experiment was conducted, egg production parameters of the quail hens were significantly (p<0.05) influenced by the different processing techniques of soya bean, with birds in T3 (Fermented dry soya bean with cassava flour). The summary of results indicated significant differences in the egg weight, egg diameter, yolk colour, shell weight, albumen weight, final body weight and total egg mass.